New Jersey's Vehicle Tracking Notice Law, and the Four Reprints That Made It

What Chapter 449 Enacted

New Jersey enacted its employer tracking statute as P.L. 2021, c.449, an act "prohibiting certain employer use of tracking devices and supplementing Title 34 of the Revised Statutes." It was approved on January 18, 2022, and section 2 provides that it takes effect on the 90th day next following the date of enactment — April 18, 2022. The section it added is codified at N.J.S.A. 34:6B-22 under the heading "Written notice for vehicle tracking device; penalties; definitions."

The operative sentence is short. Subsection b. provides that an employer who knowingly makes use of a tracking device in a vehicle used by an employee without providing written notice to the employee is subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000 for the first violation and not to exceed $2,500 for each subsequent violation, collectible by the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development in a summary proceeding under the Penalty Enforcement Law of 1999, P.L.1999, c.274 (C.2A:58-10 et seq.).

What the sentence does not contain is as notable as what it does. There is no timing requirement, no prescribed content for the notice beyond that it be written, no retention or deletion rule for the location data collected, no exception for suspected misconduct, and no private right of action. The enforcement route runs through the Commissioner and the summary proceeding statute.

The Definitions That Do the Work

Subsection a. supplies three definitions, and two of them narrow the reach of the prohibition considerably.

• "Tracking device" means an electronic or mechanical device which is designed or intended to be used for the sole purpose of tracking the movement of a vehicle, person, or device, but shall not include devices used for the purpose of documenting employee expense reimbursement
• "Employer" means an employer or employer's agent, representative, or designee, and excludes the Department of Corrections, the State Parole Board, county correctional facilities, any State or local government entity, and any public transportation system including but not limited to scheduled or charter bus transportation, whether operated by a public or private company
• "Electronic communications device" means any device that uses electronic signals to create, transmit, and receive information, including a computer, telephone, personal digital assistant, or other similar device

The third definition is a survival from an earlier draft. The enacted subsection b. prohibits the untold use of a tracking device only; the phrase "electronic communications device" appears nowhere in the operative prohibition. It remains in the statute's definitional subsection and in subsection c., which refers to devices mandated by federal motor carrier regulation. The comparison across reprints below shows where the term dropped out.

The words "sole purpose" in the tracking device definition are load-bearing. A device that tracks movement among other functions is not, by the definition's terms, designed or intended for the sole purpose of tracking, and the express carve-out for expense reimbursement documentation removes a second category of mileage-capturing tools from the definition.

From a Fourth-Degree Crime to a Civil Penalty

Assembly Bill 3950 was introduced on April 13, 2020 as a supplement to Title 2C — the criminal code — rather than Title 34. As introduced, subsection b. provided that it "shall be a crime of the fourth degree for an employer to make use of a tracking device or electronic communications device in a vehicle used by an employee that is not provided by the employer, or, in the case of a vehicle provided by an employer for an employee's use, to make use of a tracking device or electronic communications device without obtaining the written consent of the employee." The sponsors' statement accompanying the introduced bill spelled out what that classification meant: "A crime of the fourth degree is punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to 18 months or a fine of up to $10,000, or both."

The chapter law as published with its amendment markings shows the sequence that produced the final text. The fourth reprint, adopted on January 10, 2022 by the General Assembly pursuant to the Governor's recommendations, struck the criminal classification and substituted the civil penalty and the Commissioner's summary proceeding. An intermediate version had proposed a middle course — a disorderly persons offense for the first and second violations and a fourth-degree crime for each subsequent one — and it did not survive either.

From Consent to Notice

The second structural change came earlier. As introduced, tracking in an employer-provided vehicle required "obtaining the written consent of" the employee. The first reprint, reported by the Assembly Labor Committee on October 22, 2020, replaced that phrase with "providing written notice to" the employee. The distinction is the one that separates New Jersey's statute from a consent regime: nothing in the enacted section conditions tracking on the employee agreeing to it.

The introduced bill also drew a line between vehicles the employer supplies and vehicles it does not, treating use of a device in an employee's own vehicle as categorically prohibited rather than merely subject to notice. The fourth reprint removed the qualifier "that is not provided by the employer," leaving a single rule keyed to a vehicle "used by an employee" regardless of who owns it.

The Other Amendments

Three narrower changes are visible in the same markup. The word "knowingly" was inserted into subsection b. by the second round of amendments, so that the penalty attaches to knowing use rather than use simpliciter. The same round added the expense reimbursement exclusion to the tracking device definition. The third round replaced "county corrections departments" with "county correctional facilities," and the fourth broadened the excluded public bodies from "any State or local law enforcement agency" to "any State or local government entity."

The public transportation exclusion arrived with the first reprint, and is drafted to cover the operation rather than the operator: it applies to any public transportation system including scheduled or charter bus transportation "whether operated by a public or private company."

The Interstate Commerce Savings Clause

Subsection c. provides that nothing in the act "shall be construed to supersede regulations governing interstate commerce including, but not limited to, the usage of electronic communications devices as mandated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration." This is where the surviving definition of electronic communications device does work. Federal hours-of-service rules require electronic logging devices in many commercial motor vehicles, and the clause states that the state notice provision is not to be read as displacing that federal mandate.

The clause is written as a rule of construction rather than an exemption for regulated carriers. It addresses the relationship between the act and federal regulation, and does not by its terms relieve a covered employer of the written notice provision for devices outside the scope of those regulations.

Where the Statute Leaves Questions

Because the enacted text sets no content standard for the written notice, the statute does not say whether a notice must identify the device, the vehicle, the data collected, or the period of collection. Because it sets no timing rule, it does not say how far in advance of the tracking the notice is owed, only that use without having provided it is what carries the penalty. And because enforcement is assigned to the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development through a summary proceeding, the statute supplies no mechanism by which an employee could pursue a violation independently.

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